Unless otherwise indicated herein, the materials described in this section are not prior art to the claims in this application and are not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
Computing devices such as personal computers, laptop computers, tablet computers, cellular phones, and countless types of Internet-capable devices are increasingly prevalent in numerous aspects of modern life. Over time, the manner in which these devices are providing information to users is becoming more intelligent, more efficient, more intuitive, and/or less obtrusive.
To facilitate more intelligent and useful services and applications, mobile devices such as tablets, mobile phones, and/or laptop computers may be configured to periodically send location data to a service provider. The service provider may then aggregate and store the location data to improve its location-based services.
In order to associate location data with a mobile device, a mobile device may obtain and use an identifying code (e.g., a cryptographically strong hash), which is referred to as a “Client ID.” The Client ID allows for location-data reports that come from the same device to be associated with one another. Accordingly, a mobile device may include its Client ID when in each location-data report that it sends. Further, each location-data report sent by a given device may include a timestamp, location data indicative of the device's location at the time indicated by the timestamp, and/or other information related to the device at the time indicated by the timestamp.